Title: Aime Moi
Rating: M
Disclaimer: I once knew somebody who owned Naruto. This being of dubious mental stability had the boy tattooed across pretty much his entire back, but even so, great pains and lots of bitching included, he only owned this single Naruto and not the manga. I own neither a Naruto-tattoo nor the manga and am somewhat relieved by this.
Warning: Insanity; Itachi and Naruto finding themselves amused by stupid, laugh-inducing lines. No, not that lines. The other lines, of course [and yes, the warning here is totally waranted].
Synopsis: Itachi meet Chaos, Chaos, meet Itachi. ::nod::
After leaving his brother's birthday party Itachi gets "randomly embraced" by Ino, who, like Naruto, works as a prostitute. She steals his wallet, but Naruto, who watches this, decides to play white knight and gives it back to Itachi. In addition he offers to guide him to his hotel. Itachi, surprisingly, accepts this proposal of sorts- Chaos ensues.
Music: Staind, Sadness and Sorrow, Vienna Teng, Bush (etc.)
I know
Tell me about the place you're from
Tell me about the things you've done
Tell me what you really need
Tell me what just makes you bleed
Cause sometimes I can't be myself, I can't
Feel inside what people say
So I just close my ears, my eyes and I feel like shutting my mouth
But I saw you were in need of help
That is when my heart just melts
When I see sorrow in your eyes
There's nowhere you can hide the lies
~by Elisa
Chapter 02: Tsuki no Meikyuu / Moon Labyrinth
Itachi was, as Naruto discovered this day, the proverbial strong and silent type.
It wasn't that he was surprised by this, in fact, living the way he did, he'd come to appreciate being able to discern different people, different personalities from each other easily. It was helpful, this ability, made things safer, and while it didn't eliminate all and every risk, it sure kept thing from progressing from risky to downright dangerous [or from there to suicidal].
Still, while Naruto had expected the other to be calm, he could not help being dumbfounded by the fact that Itachi did not speak at all.
Sure, he had heard him, had pseudo-spoken, coerced and interacted with him before, but here, now, in this strange and toppled world of candy cigarette smoke he could almost believe that he had only imagined the others voice. Who knew, maybe Itachi had no tongue or something-
It would at least explain why the entire walk, minute after minute after stepstepstep the man had remained stoically silent.
He swallowed the growl prancing in his throat while his body's foot kicked a can away, and really, this action was sorely his body's doing and not that of himself. It had to be drawn, that shadowy line, between what he, himself did (laugh, live, struggle, tumble) and what his body ventured to do; because, for once, it was not him that archedcummedscreamed, it was not him who spread himself out, ready to be stared at. During his working hours he allowed his personality, his mind a break, because a single thought during those hours was more than enough to make him tense for the rests of the night, to make it even more uncomfortable, even more disturbing and-
and Naruto railed himself back from this from all the thoughts that were born in the sewers of hell and would only bring him pain.
He frowned, mumbled something just under his breath, something he himself most likely did not hear and decided that boredom had never been healthy where it concerned him; and -oh dear- he was bored, sososo bored, because he really could listen to himself talk for only so long without being...sick. Without feeling troubled. Being bored tended to plant all kinds of weird thoughts in his head, all kinds of rotten and dangerous and vermilion sins, the kind of things he had never trusted and never would, the kind of things that made him entertain the notion that he could imagine voices and that strangers were allowed to fuck up his head royally. [When it really wasn't so]
Boredom created the kind of thoughts, the kind of things that he could absolutely do without.
Shaking his head, Naruto glanced, somewhat irritated, at the other and cursed him for keeping his silence, cursed him for making him doubt himself. (Wasn't there somewhere, somehow a law against suddenly falling this silent? Against suffocating people with all those non-sentences-?)
How could he have forgotten- ignored, locked away, annihilated- the fact that the strong and silent type usually drove him up the wall? It seemed stupid now that he had endangered his sanity in such a way.
"You have not bitten your tongue off after I have spoken with you back then, right?"
Itachi looked at him, and, as if to aggravate him further, shook his head without adding anything. He didn't even say something about just how ridiculous the idea was.
And while Naruto wasn't paranoid by nature, wasn't even so much as suspicious (which was again somewhat risky and terribly irresponsible considering how he lived), there was, at times, distrust burning in the blue of his eyes; he knew, after all, that Itachi could be lying to him about not having bitten his tongue off (about a great million bone-coloured things, actually. But he'd rather not care about these, too); and this made him persistent:
"As far as answers go, this one sucked. I mean, how can I know that you're honest? Eh? I'd need, like, for you to stick out your tongue or actually go and say something..?"
Naruto hmpfed at the silence that followed, and combed a hand through his hair, reminding himself just in time to be gentler than usual, more careful than he was with his real hair, lest the wig should get the notion that it was allowed to go on vacation. The inane thing simply did not understand yet that freedom wasn't for it.
"Geesh, I kind of really wish that the scenery'd be more interesting. Somebody should take some time and paint these snobbish houses bright orange. Would at least give me something to occupy myself with right now. We can't be all silent and happy that way."
"The inhabitants must certainly consider themselves relieved, I believe, that their houses have not yet seen such things happen."
"Why? Because off-arrogance white is the new trend? I just think it sucks," a pause, a grimace and "you know these moments where you realise things you'd rather not know? I just discovered that I automatically associate a certain, annoying, freakish person with the word sucking, yikes."
And for more reasons than this, Naruto found himself thinking about the pink haired student he met the other day, the pretty one. And as usual when he was thinking about her, he felt sad and didn't quite know why. There had been something, something maybe with a capital 'S' and even today he couldn't grasp it, because it was forever far-away and translucent. Her shoulders had been tense, the fall of her hair had been soft, and she'd said, she'd said that, something is wrong with your head, idiot! And this wasn't what made him sad, it wasn't [but he should have listened, today showed just that]-
Itachi looked at him then, all palesnowlight skin and darkdark eyes that didn't actually say all that much, but had to murmur something at least, and Naruto frowned and looked closer and thought the expression was something like the cousin thrice removed from incredulous amusement. Blinking, he thought about what he himself had said, about what he'd let go... and artlessly choked on thin, slightly poisonous air when the realisation hit him.
"Don't look at me like that-! That sounded all wrong, and, and- I don't want to listen to him, I don't want to hear those things, I keep telling that person not to traumatise me, but he does not listen, going on about all this crazy shit..! I tell him that he can keep his perverted stories to himself, but he doesn't care about that. People simply do not believe me!"
"I am not inclined to think about the reasons for their distrust."
Naruto hunched his shoulders, sealed his hands inside his pockets and while he rolled his eyes his ill-humour faded with the other's words; the aggravation that had only a moment ago made him yell rolled elsewhere, ebbed, beautifully broken away.
"What is it with people and their aptitude to find their tongue in the most unfortunate moments-?"
And Naruto, after the words left his mouth, scrunched his eyes close and thought about Itachi's own words, their nature. The melancholy that clung to them seemed to be the same one that resided in the other's face(in those wounds posing as eyes posing as glass posing as dead). The teen thought about how everything in one's head was connected, was actually one, thought about the scars in Itachi's face and how they leaked their blood and grime into the man's throat, burning his thoughts into hardened sentences of sadness. He thought this and found concern standing on his tongue and saying easy things to bemuse and free.
"Ino would say that this serves me right, that I should not spend time with people, when I know that they are a few shirts short of their closet. I know that the freak is all too interested in pissing me off just like I knew that you were going to be silent and distant and I still made that offer, it's stupid, that's what it is...wait, no,stupid is too harmless, that trait of mine is, if anything, pretty much mental."
"Insanity does not have to have corrupted you. It can simply be the boredom that overrules your other thoughts, that dominates, if I may add, your head in a rather obvious way and makes you do things you will deem to be annoying."
"Boredom by any other name. Still think that tt makes my point valid."
Itachi merely inclined his head slightly and the blond muttered, half in thoughts-
"You are stressed, aren't you?"
"Admittedly, yes, but I seem to find the stress more amusing than the yoga."
There was a hasty movement, and Naruto's body, tan even in the darkness, bent over while an almost choked sound tumbled from his mouth. It took him a moment, almost two, but when those electric blue eyes turned to Itachi, when he saw the way they were curved in amusement, he understood that the sound had been a fragment of a laugh, a sound he had startled out of the boy without warning.
The tension he usually felt, the one that kept his eyes somewhat narrow and made them ache, gentled out; Itachi had never met a person that had reacted in such a way to a sentence full of nothing but crippled words.
Naruto grinned, open and good-natured, and the taller man ignored the doctrines that told him, stubbornly, that unexpected behaviour, even when it appeared harmless, was to be seen as a potential threat.
"And what was it that got you this stressed? I mean, how were your days so far-?", the boy asked and his tone did not belie the humour in his expression, it made Itachi want-(he would rather not know, and if that was not knew, he knew not what was.)
"My days-? I must admit, that I usually try to take it one day at a time, but, it seems, that lately several have indeed attacked me at once."
The other blinked, gazed at him with a sudden earnest expression, and canted his head thoughtfully at him.
"This sounded almost like something a certain friend of mine would say."
And was not the term friend almost heavy, acid-hot the way the boy pronounced it? It sounded fragile, thin, the way metal is thin but durable and deceivingly strong. The way Naruto said friend sounded like somebody chanting his prayer or defending his beliefs. It was not normal, but it seemed natural and was all the more insane for it. Itachi took a slow, flat breath and:
"I am waiting for the next line...or have you no more to offer?"
"Well, than, would a fly without wings be called a walk?"
"If you try to fail, and succeed, which have you done?"
"If electricity comes from electrons, does morality come from, morons?
"Why do they put pictures of criminals up in the Post Office? What are people supposed to do, write to these people? Furthermore, why don't they put their pictures on the postage stamps so the mailmen could look for them while delivering the mail?"
"Uhh...I actually thought about that one."
Itachi traced the boy in front of him with his eyes, felt the truth almost of the statement and the ...almost befuddlement at it's strange nature. Something told him that the boy had thought about it and that not in merely in passing. It should seem ridiculous, but it only made Naruto appear mind-robbing honest. If the amount of words he sprouted were any indication than the teen had to be thinking about a lot of things. Itachi was not quite certain if he ever had met a male who could speak as much and as fast as him.
Said boy turned himself for a short moment completely to him, only to mumble something and turn back, it seemed that he had guessed Itachi's thoughts
"Well, I would like you to say something, but, really, you don't make this easy," he turned his head, fixed Itachi with those pool-blue eyes that were biting, violently, against the red of his hair, and continued, "not that I think that making you speak is impossible or anything, and even if it were, I would't care."
"You would not?"
"No, because impossible is just a word, it's an excuse. People say "this is impossible" and tuck their tail between their legs and make a run for it."
And Itachi encountered a face that was born out of not-understanding, but not soaked in hatred. Surprise, new and startling, grew in his chest and put a fist against his breastbone, pressing against his ribcage in wonder.
"How can they decide," the boy continued, full of something like anger, "that something is impossible without truly trying it? Without giving something their all? Without knowing if somebody else might be capable of doing what they think is impossible? I mean, a single person is just a part of a mass, a single person can only know so much, and that means that a single opinion does not have to be right, correct? It, that single opinion, is just a-" he waved with his hands, urgent, unsure but determined"- a fragment, a piece of the whole thing. Not that I think that the majority has to be right, either...depending on the situation, both can be wrong and right, or...well, whatever."
"So you'd try to make me speak even if the chances were slim?"
A glance shot upward."Aren't the chances already slim? You only open your mouth every five minutes or so, but do you see me shut up? Give up?" A grin from mostly silent lips and a laugh from the other. "So right..! I keep on talking, thinking that it will get you going as well. And well, if it is difficult it's also a challenge; I happen to like those."
"The only thing you might get out of me could be a scream"
"What? Honestly?"
"No."
"Good, I wouldn't have a back up plan for that."
"-that?"
"Yeah, you know, you sissy-ing out on me. Would probably give me a heart-attack and that doesn't sound appealing."
"You think that you would react this strongly?"
The teen shot him a quizzical look and Itachi elaborated, quietly, voice tinged with humour.
"It's simply that you look tougher than that."
"Most people wouldn't have a plan in such a situation-"
The teen looked at him at this, or rather, the boy turned his head away but kept his gaze on him, the blue of his eyes darkening into midnight ink on old paper, thick and thin at once, too strong to be touched by his hands, but to untamed to be allowed to wander on its own. He had the feeling that whatever it was that Naruto touched would be stainedcleaned for good.
"-not that I have one to begin with."
"Is the formulation of a plan too much of a challenge...?"
"You're a real charmer, eh?"
"I have heard this before, yes."
"That just shows that people talk a lot if the day is long. Well, I could talk much more, and would probably still not say this much bull."
The boy did not knew him, but...maybe he saw him.
The fact that he was speaking about Itachi, crafting words and tales and throwing them, almost carelessly, almost violently, around just made it all the more obvious
The older male was not surprised, which, in itself was not a surprise either. People had the habit of being thoughtless, of speaking without holding a conversation. He had lost count how many people he had watched drowning each other in their poorly disguised monologues.
However, Itachi found, that, despite Naruto's human heart, his words hit and stuck.
They portrayed knowledge gained or stolen from experience, showed thoughts that were unbalanced but not easily tackled to the ground. Loking at this eyes, those sky scars Itachi saw something that tore into his veins, that made him stop and listen; Naruto's brand of wisdom was, in a way, something he himself could advocate, his words something he himself would say. How peculiar it was, he decided slowly, to find his own truth, his opinion, shattered in a thousand dreams of glass and rebuild not into the careful, sordid tale of his, but the stumbling, catching song of a boy.
"And yet", the blond admissioned after a short, stumbling pause, "you silence me, make me quieter, in a way." There was another sulfur tasting pause, with their muscles tensing and their sky changing, while the gentle hummingbird song of the dark engulfed them, "But that does not even annoy me, well- okay, it does annoy me, but I don't find it too bad; which is strange, because-" the shake of a stubborn, unique spun head, red hair drifting strangely purposeful through the air; a silence speaking about words that would not be uttered and a reason that was locked away. Naruto furrowed his brows, "at the same time, you make me say a lot of things I'd rather not say. Weird things-"
Itachi felt half compelled to point out, that the blond was saying a lot of things, giving a lot of silver threaded thoughts away; he knew that he could chide the boy- after all, how much could the youth talk if he was currently quiet?- however, It seemed strangely impossible to use such ugly, morose words on the sky-eyed male.
And so, Naruto talked and Itachi listened.
Silence did not descend, but calm found itself around them at this evening.
-How strange it was, to experience such a peaceful day in this forgotten city-
Naruto leaned his head back and allowed the fake hair to brush across his neck, to tease it with a slightly rough almost familiar caress. He bared his throat to the night air, laughed and talked; was open but not weak and managed, with surprising ease, to draw thoughtful nocturne eyes to him.
They were not warm, those eyes, were not truly, not fully, not really kind and even then, in this abandoned patch of the world, those eyes were not focused sorely on him. Strayed, without moving away, to darker, apparently far more saddening things.
Naruto felt that he recognised these thousand of thoughts the other man was occupied with, could pretty much hear them flapping their wings behind this twilight gaze, could, if he tried hard enough, feel them brushing against him, tattooing their intensity beneath his skin, making it crawl, without hurting, without ripping it. He knew them, but had no name for them. He'd had them too, before. He'd have them again, even.
What a startling surreal feeling it suddenly was, Naruto thought, to walk here with this man. He almost disliked it.
Trying to fight against the oddness gnawing at his bones, the teen drew three short breaths in (ininin and away), and only one out, his breathing not audible, but almost excited; he decided, in his truly spontaneous, honest, break-a-neck-and-laugh way, that Itachi's eyes were burning with an arsenic light, a grave candle flame; they were like something light shrouded in the hazy red of artery blood.
And yet, they were, despite their burning quality, not persistent, were not even bothering Naruto truly; and he knew that this was strange, was odd, was insane...and while he knew this he could not bring himself to care.
Up until this moment Naruto had not even realised, had not listened to the voice that told him that there were moments were he was uncomfortable; trusting, like everyone else, that make-belief was as real as the ground beneath his feet, trusting, that pseudo-hope was all the strength he needed, while the King of Hearts screamed for his Queen to behead him.
It was too bad that even the locking-glass world had a fundamental law; that not-knowing did not mean, did never mean, not-existing. Naruto had to accept, with his heart beating a trifle beat too loud, a bit too fast, that he was human and somewhat weak and really hurt, and that part of him was still bleeding about the injustice of it all. And he had to accept this even when he had no place where he could stitch himself together, no place to be truly at home. While he was fighting to make it out of this place of rented bodies and candy-cotton truths, his life was ticking away.
He wasn't happy. He was kicking and laughing and yelling, but he wasn't happy so long as he lived like this.
Coming across something- call me worry, call me loathing, call me hate, call me child, call me fearfearfear- in himself that he had thought to have dried away, Naruto broke their eye contact but refused to falter in his steps.
He was not happy, Naruto knew that, but he would be. No matter what this stranger did to make him all kinds of uncomfortable. Fingering his belt loop, he stated, rather abruptly, that he should have let Ino go with Itachi and not himself. He just wanted to think about somthing else. And if not that, then someone else would help, too.
"And why would that be..?"
"She might have made you happy-"
Naruto did not look at the other, because he knew that there would be nothing to see; not a single muscle would shift to reveal the inner workings of the black haired man, and the eyes as well would be shielded. It made no sense to gaze at something that remained hidden, that was not supposed to be seen.
(But why did he think that he could if he tried-?)
"She might've gotten you to, y'know, smile-"
He linked his hands behind his head and looked at the sky, trying to imagine the stars that had to be there, even when they stayed invisible in this big city of lies and dead skin cast over even blacker hearts.
"-or, who knows, talk."
"Are you informing me that the girl would have been better suited for this job?"
"Ha-! As if!"
"The hard cases are for you, then?"
"Exactly and, of course, the cases where the consumer looks more like a vic belong to me as well. Can't have people being scared of Nicho-"
Naruto furrowed his brows, blinked his eyes shut and laughed somewhat sheepishly.
"I wonder if Ino would have even brought you wherever it is that you want to be...without hauling you to the next hotel, that is."
"And you don't feel inclined to follow her possible footsteps?"
"Nope, with me you've got to make the deal prior to the act and only that one deal stands, there's no chance for an upgrade or whatever. And we, you know, you and me, agreed upon hause-haunting-tour and that and nothing else is what you get. I am just this honest."
The muscles in Itachis face shifted without giving anything away and he nodded. Naruto, again, felt annoyed, and his steps became irregeluar, long and bouncy, fed by his restless energy. He could have felt angry, hurt, that Itachi seemed to be so disinterested in him. Most days the blond wold have found his temper flaring, or his mood plummeting by the fact that the other was not interested in him, but somehow he realised, that Itachi did not mean to insult him. The nocturne eyes were distant, politely detached but did not show the coldness that the blond associated with disdain. There was not the white-noise ring of criticism in his voice, just the butter-yellow silence of truth. And this was why-
why Itachi's not-quite refusal left Naruto unintentionally calm.
It did not feel as though those words were forged to hurt, or created to destroy, and how could they? Itachi was not there enough, emotionally at least, to want to hurt him. Naruto could not mind this half-there person, he did not mind this half-there eyes, he did not mind the mouth that did not answer.
The older man seemed closer, without being too close, than so many of those stick figures calling themselves human and Naruto, the half-child did not feel endangered, even when the confusion gurgled heatedly in his lungs.
Smiling, with lips that felt heavy and furrowed brows casting a few shadows over his eyes, he listened to the man's steps, listened closely for another unknown, and did only belatedly realise that they had reached their destination (that was a lie he didn't know about yet).
"That'll be 2000 yen, 'kay?"
Money was plucked from the once-upon-a-time stolen wallet and Itachi noted, without distaste, that Naruto allowed himself to not pretend, to look, in fact, interestedly at the colourful paper worth another meal, worth, maybe another few calm hours.
He gazed at the money that had to be more valuable to him than to most other people, because the teen had actual interest in sating his basic needs, an acute and burning interest, most likely. Itachi closed the wallet and tucked it away and the eyes which were trained on the money narrowed, the line of the blond's jaw appeared harder, the mouth less tempted to joke and smile.
"That's too much-"
"Hmm."
"Wouldn't have pecked you as the kind of person to-"
"I found it appropriate."
"Appropriate? Appropriate my ass! I'll tell you something: I take money after I've done something to earn it. Not before. Not because. Not- "
Raising his eyes, voids that they were, that they were supposed to be in this moment between shaking houses and tiny, darkly hissing alleys, he mustered Naruto. Somehow the thought came to him that he'd rather have Naruto think about the things he said. "So you want to work for me, for the money I want to give you?" There were all kinds of openings the boy left, especially when he simply nodded and waited and breathed. Another moment, and either Naruto had though the words over, or something in his face had become visible, because-
"Wh-what? No, seriously, what? Were you...? No, no, no. Not like this, I did not mean that at all! I wasn't talking about my job-! Not with you! Just- wait, give me the money when you see me again, yeah? I might be able to do something for you then."
"The chances that we will meet again are slim at best."
"You know what? I don't care. I don't want to get money like this, it makes me- it's no good."
The silence that followed, on Itachi's part, drew a violent red, the colour of a fire burning strongly, to Naruto's cheeks. It was quite clear that he didn't much care for silences, poignant or not. Quite clear, in fact, even without the angry "Idiot" being thrown at him, he thought. He probably could consider himself lucky that too energetic a person to stand still whenever he wanted to make a point, whenever he was angry or happy or something else; he deemed it unlikely that they would have made it to the hotel if they had stopped whenever he had riled the other up.
"If you want to give me that money so desperately you'll just have to see me again, ne?"
"I wouldn't know how. This will most likely be the final goodbye."
"Bullshit! How can you know this for sure? I am lucky with these kind of things, so there's no way that we won't see each other again. You better believe it."
"The word lucky is in ordinary circumstances enough to make me hesitate, but, in your case it seems so ill-applied that I can not help but to be skeptical."
"My- Wha-! Don't go around and judge me this easily. Don't you think that this is all there is too me-"
And it was night and it was dark, but despite all this it was all too easy for him to decipher the righteous fury, the sheer indignation burning across Naruto's face like a fire. And it was night and it was dark, but it still troubled Itachi who always looked at people and their ways without being able to feel anything close to hatred (Fugako being the sole exception to this, pitiful man that he was) and looked at Naruto and almost, almost felt interested in these blueblue eyes of heavenhell.
"Goodbye-" He managed to say this with a clear head and a calm heart and only the beginnings, the seeds of a desire that painted itself in innocent colours. Even when they touched the wound in his face and started, slowly, to make themselves at home there. He turned and walked and if he was a bit slower than usually, that, surely, it didn't add to much. Certainly didn't matter too much.
And then he heard it, not in the distance, but close; Naruto's voice and
"See you later!"
Certainly, Itachi felt like smiling.
:Thank you all for reading.
